Lawmen of the Wild West

Native American Places

Medicine Wheel Memorial Site, Wyoming

The Medicine Wheel Memorial Site in the Bighorn National Forest of Wyoming is a stone circle 245 feet around and 75 feet across.

The huge circle has been there longer than any memory of any of the ancestors of any of the Plains tribes. The Crow have always known where it is, however, and anthropological evidence in the surrounding area indicates tracks made by hundreds of "travois" (a sled bearing belongings dragged by people, dogs or later, horses) means the site was visited often, most likely as a pilgrimage.

The wheel has 28 "spokes" radiating from a central stone pile. The spokes might represent the lunar month. Six of the spokes extend beyond the circle and at the end of these spokes are conical heaps of stones that might have been used as shelters.

Like Stonehenge in England, it is widely believed that The Medicine Wheel was connected to celestial observations but the exact ways have been long lost.

You can visit The Medicine Wheel from dawn until dusk from June through September. It is located at the 10,000-foot level of Medicine Mountain near the western border of the Bighorn National Forest, off Highway 14A.